The butt-welding of cylindrical workpieces, including rod and tubes wherein the ends of each workpiece are joined together has been carried out for a considerable time period by various welding processes. The occurrence of weld flash located at the junction of the two workpieces results in numerous and often serious problems generally depending upon the end product application for the particular butt-welded workpieces. A particularly serious problem arising in this manner is occasioned when small diameter wires of various refractory metals are butt-welded together to serve as the in-lead components for electric lamps. Since these composite in-lead wire constructions are frequently required to be hermetically sealed in the closed lamp envelope, any irregularity in the wire contour can and does frequently produce seal failures. It would thereby be desirable for this product application and others to provide a means to reduce the diameter of the weld flash between the junction of two cylindrical workpieces which have been butt-welded together in a simple and effective manner.
It would also be desirable in accomplishing the foregoing objective to provide an apparatus of relatively simple construction which simply reduces the weld flash diameter without further need to actually remove said material. It becomes possible in this manner to avoid mechanical grinding or shearing operations as well as other non-mechanical techniques for removal of unwanted material such as chemical etching and the like. It would be still further desirable if the apparatus being employed to simply reduce the weld flash dimensions does so in a continuous single step operation requiring minimum handling of the welded workpieces.